The first Sebring 12-hour race took place in March of 1951 and within a short ten-year period the annual racing event held on a former World War II training base for B-17 pilots and crews was being touted as the premier sports car event in North America.
During those first ten years, and well into the 1960s and ’70s, the Sebring race began to draw some of the most famous national and international drivers and cars ever seen in one racing event in America. The race also began to draw entertainment celebrities like CBS broadcasting legend Walter Cronkite to the 5.2 mile racing circuit. Cronkite not only broadcast the race during a three-year period but also drove in the 1959 12-hour event at the wheel of a Lancia Appia Zagato which finished 40th overall.
